About a year ago, I started to get sick of Facebook.
Well, not sick of it because who can get sick of Facebook, right? 😉 Sick of being dependent on something for my business that became unwieldy, tedious, and sometimes offensive. FYI Facebook is one of the most effective marketing tools in both my voiceover business and comic book business so I’m not going to stop using it just because my News Feed is a cesspool of cat selfies and political rants.
In an attempt to improve my Facebook experience, I came up with three rules. I wrote about it last year, but I’ll list them again for your convenience:
1) I may not accept your friend request. I used to accept pretty much anyone. Nowadays I screen them much more thoroughly. For starters, we must have multiple friends in common. However, if we’ve never met, aren’t in the same industry, and/or don’t share a common background (location, schooling, etc.) then Mutual Friends don’t matter. There are some people out there who “collect” voiceover friends and they’re not in the industry. Creepy! If you don’t know me and want to follow my exploits, please Like my business page instead.
One of my best friends has an interesting Facebook Friend policy; if she won’t hug you in real life, she won’t be your friend on Facebook.
2) As soon as I accept your friend request, I will most likely un-follow you. I have well over 2,000 friends on Facebook and I know about half of them in real life. That means my News Feed is clogged with cat photos, memes, political opinions, selfies, game requests, and what you made for lunch. I love you all, but I don’t care!
To further combat this, if one of your posts comes up on my News Feed and it’s politically charged, religiously proselytizing, bigoted, or just plain gross, I’m un-following you and quite possibly un-friending you. Since I have started this practice, reading my News Feed has become a much more pleasurable experience. Now I can see interesting things that my real-life friends are up to without panning for gold.
3) When I get a notification that’s it’s your birthday, I may un-friend you. Sounds mean, right? Hear me out!
I average about three to five birthday notifications a day. I’ve always wished everyone a Happy Birthday on Facebook, but now I take it as a opportunity to review our “friendship”. If we have been Facebook friends for more than a year, have never met in real life, and have not interacted on Facebook, I’m un-friending you. The odds are you won’t notice or care anyway!
So how did it go…?
TIP OF THE WEEK
Fan-freaking-tasically! When I started the experiment I had 2,175 Facebook friends and a bloated, obnoxious News Feed. As of this writing I now have 1,638 friends and it has made a HUGE difference. I can actually see the posts of people that I know and care about on a regular basis.
This experiment was an effort to make my personal Facebook profile more personal. I’m not saying that you should too, but take some time to think about all of the social media platforms you use, how you use them, and why you use them. Do you use them as tools, toys, or weapons…?
NEWS AND NOTES
More free audio books! The first three people who email me at tom@nulltomdheere.com gets a free download of Be the Boss Everyone Wants to Work For: A Guide for New Leaders by Willam A. Gentry.
My next Edge Studio “Business and Money 201” webinar will be this Thursday, September 22nd at 8PM EST. The subject: Paperwork! We’ll talk about how to not get buried by it. Click here to register.
HAPPY HAPPYS
Happy Hobbit Day and Butterscotch Pudding Day!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
From my village to yours; this is Tom Dheere, GKN News…
Tom Dheere is a 20-year veteran of the voice over industry who has narrated thousands of projects for clients in over a dozen countries. He is also a coach at Edge Studio, voiceover business consultant known as the Voice Over Strategist, and is currently writing & producing the comic book “Agent 1.22”.